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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3230111" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for all the positive posts, everyone. And thanks for delurking to post, Nightbreeze.Verbatim, I'll try to remember to hit the Rogues' Gallery thread this weekend. I have a file with their level-ups and other notes that's a bit of a mess, but I'll see what I can extract from it. * * * * * Chapter 61RECOVERYThe next eight hours passed with interminable slowness.  Dar and Talen, keeping watch for another attack, took alternating shifts patrolling the perimeter of the room and standing in vigil atop the lava platform.  There were two doors into the place, the large stone double doors they’d arrived through, and a smaller door that opened onto a narrow staircase descending to another level.  After the last attack, they fortified the place somewhat, shutting the stone doors and piling the bodies of the dead clerics to form a barricade in front of them.  They likewise worked to seal the other door, using some iron climbing spikes from Talen’s pack, and a few of the spiked morningstars from the slain senior clerics.  Talen would not touch the latter weapons, as he reported feeling a terrible feeling spead through his gut when he so much as brushed the hilt of one.  But they were very durable, and Dar found that by hammering a few into the jam of the door using his club, they made very effective doorstops. Those defensive measures didn’t make them feel all that much more secure.  Both fighters had seen the demon vanish in front of them, and they knew that the thing could most likely reappear with equal suddenness.  Furthermore, the temple was infused with a palpable aura of evil that affected both of them, putting them on edge, and filling their idle moments with dark thoughts of death and destruction.But no further foes threatened them, and by the end of the first hour, they’d relaxed their guard enough for the two warriors to start resting in shifts.  It was more a matter of necessity, as both men could barely stand upright, let alone maintain an alert vigilance.  By the end of the eight hours, both looked almost as badly off as the dead bodies heaped before the main exit doors.But their vigilance paid off.  Allera stirred back to consciousness even before Varo regained his spells and could treat her.  With both of them regaining their strength and their spells, they turned their magic to the battered fighters, healing their wounds, and easing their exhaustion through the use of restorative magic.  Allera also created fresh food and water for them, which went a long way to making them feel human once more.  Even Allera’s magic could do nothing for Varo’s ruined eye.  The cleric rigged a crude patch for it, more to spare the others having to stare at the empty socket, than for his own needs.  The skin surrounding the grievous wound had grown back, but it was a new pink, and clearly distinguishable from the weathered hide covering the rest of his head.  It was a clear marker of how close they had all come to destruction. The mad elf remained an enigma.  Allera treated his physical wounds, but he remained in a nearly catatonic state.  He ate food and drank water when it was put into his mouth, but did not otherwise respond to their prodding.  Varo had taken a strange interest in the creature, and remained by his side while the others debated what to do next. “Can we get out of this damned place, now?” Dar asked. “Where can we go?” Talen asked.  “Those clerics came from somewhere, yet we didn’t find any corridors that led off from the wight room.  The only other apparent way open to us is down.”“We’re already too far under the freaking ground,” Dar said.  The fighter was going through a small pile of loot he’d collected from the place.  The prizes of the collection was a pair of huge fire opals, each the size of a clenched fist, he’d prised from eye sockets of the goat-being statue, and another gem, an only slightly smaller brilliant-cut green stone, he’d found on the body of one of the clerics.  The green gem glowed with a soft inner light, so faint that you had to really look to see it.  Dar hadn’t needed Varo’s spells to tell him it was magical, and obviously valuable.  All three gems went into the mercenary’s pack.  The battered leather of the pack had taken quite a beating, and it seemed to be kept together by habit as much as anything else.  While the others talked, he took an extra cultist robe, and fashioned a pair of sacks out of it, repackaging his considerable stash of loot before dropping it all back into the pack.Both fighters had taken clothes and armor from the dead men, replacing their ragged and filthy garb with fresher gear.  Dar had kept his black robe as well, buckling his swordbelt and backpack tightly over it to keep the garment from snagging on his weapons.  He’d recovered another of the garments for Talen, but the captain had taken one look at the blood-colored sigil on the fabric before refusing. “I am surprised that we have not been attacked again,” Talen said.  “Have we broken the power of the cult of Orcus?” “It would not be wise to assume such,” Varo said, coming over toward them.  “The taint of that unholy body runs deeper, much deeper, into this place.  We have seen but a tiny portion of Rappan Athuk in our travels; far more terrible horrors lie beneath us.”“You seem to know a great deal about this place,” Talen said.  “Yeah, but don’t expect him to share any of it with ignorant grunts like ourselves,” Dar said.  “What aren’t you telling us this time, priest?”The cleric’s cool exterior was not disturbed by the fighter’s accusation.  “I have no secrets to share with you.  As I have told you before, I know only the legends of my order.  Like you, I am learning as I go, and trying to survive.  I only know that this shrine—and others like it—fuel the potency of the dread entity that controls this place.”“Others?” Allera asked.  “How many others?”“I do not know,” Varo said.  “But I can feel the malevolence of this place.  It senses our intrusion here, and hates us for it.  Can you not feel it, healer?”Allera only shivered and turned away.  “All the more reason to get the hell out of here,” Dar said.  “Agreed,” Varo said.  “But I ask you indulgence, for just a few more minutes.  I cannot destroy the evil that dwells here... but perhaps I can weaken it.”  He turned and walked over to the grim statue that dominated the back of the room.  He knelt before it, and took his divine focus off from where it dangled from his neck.  “Now what’s he doing?” Dar asked.  Curious, the three of them rose and walked over to him.  The cleric was chanting in an unfamiliar language, slowly lifting his arms, holding the golden sigil between them on its leather throng.  His three companions could not understand his words, but one of them... Dagos they did recognize, two syllables that pounded into their consciousness like the beating of a drum.  Varo took up his sigil and lifted it high in one hand.  With the other, he took out a flask—one of several from the ogre loot—and starting spraying its contents upon the statue.  The droplets of holy water sizzled like acid as they splashed on the smooth black stone, leaving a bright sheen upon its surface. Without ceasing his chant, Varo reached into his pouch and drew out a fistful of something.  He threw the material upon the statue and the surrounding ground as well; fine shavings of silver, painstakingly hacked from a larger object.  Blood glistened from some of the tiny slivers, from where the sharp ends had pierced the cleric’s flesh.  Ignoring the blood covering his hand, Varo continued his chant, which began to accelerate into a rising crescendo. “This... this is not right,” Talen said.  He hesitated, clearly wanting to withdraw, but torn between wanting to intervene to stop the cleric from what he was doing.  Allera stood beside him, her eyes wide. And then, abruptly, Varo stopped.  He lowered his hands, and sagged forward. “What did you do?” Dar asked. “I invoked the power of Dagos to weaken the connection of Orcus to this place,” the cleric explained.  “It is not complete; this place will have to be hallowed by a holy priest to fully destroy it.  But it will certainly not please the Lord of the Undead.”“As if we didn’t have enough problems,” Dar said.  “Let’s get moving,” Talen said.  “Where?” Dar asked. “Other than Max, we’ve left nothing but enemies behind us,” Talen said.  “That leaves only one way to go; forward.”“Down the stairs, you mean,” Dar said.  “The last time we went deeper into the dungeon, Tiros paid for that mistake with his life.”Talen spun on Dar, his frustration betrayed on his face.  “Do you have another alternative, mercenary?  Perhaps we crawl back and take our chances with the spiders, and the wererats?  Or maybe we can find another rat tunnel to crawl into, and hope we don’t crawl into another ambush?  Or perhaps you’d prefer to search until we find out where those clerics came from, and maybe find the rest of them?”“What about the elf?” Allera said.  “He is no longer in danger of dying, but his mind... it is far from here.”“Put him out of his...” Dar began, but Varo interjected, “No.  He has to come with us.”Dar looked angrily at the cleric, then aside at Allera.  He slashed down his hand.  “Do whatever in the hells you want, then, but he’s your problem.  I’m sure as heck not going to carry him.”  Turning away, the fighter stalked across the room toward the far door, where he started wrenching out the wedges he’d bashed into the jam earlier.  “I’ll help you with him,” Allera said to Varo.  “Maybe we can put together a litter.”Talen lingered, looking up at the statue again.  Without its gemstone eyes, it looked somehow even more malevolent, staring down at him from the cavernous black holes deep within its skull.  The captain felt lost, surrounded by a flow of events that he could neither control nor manage.  Thus far, he’d stayed alive, but those around him had fallen, one by one.  Of those he’d brought with him into this place, only Allera remained, and she had just come within a hair’s breadth of dying.  “Talen, are you all right?” He turned to see the healer standing beside him.  Behind her, Varo was wrapping a blanket around the shafts of Allera’s spear and Aelos’s staff.  Allera’s eyes were full of empathy as she laid her hand on his arm.  He could take almost anything, but that simple gesture of understanding almost undid him.  He felt a wall of unbridled emotion surge within him, and only barely managed to keep it under control. “I’m fine,” he lied, and turned to follow Dar. A minute later, the five of them—including the comatose elf—had gathered before the far door.  Dar had removed the obstructions, and as he pulled the door open, their light shone upon a dark set of weathered stone steps.  A smell of old graves drifted up from below. They started down.The staircase descended deep through the surrounding rock.  In the narrow space, their footfalls sounded overly loud on the smooth stone.  The light from the end of Aelos’s staff, now part of the stretcher that Allera and Varo were using to carry the unconscious elf, played over their faces from below, casting dark hollows around their eyes.  Talen, behind Dar in the lead, had his magical sword out, its light shining ahead of them, stretching the mercenary’s shadow out ahead of them down the stairs. After several minutes of trudging down stairs, their light indicated an open space below.  They emerged into a large chamber of worked stone, with a high ceiling supported by squat stone buttresses some twenty feet above.  They could see what looked like large stone biers ahead of them to the left and right, forming orderly rows that appeared to extend across the room, at least as far as they could see.  “Tombs,” Talen said, shining the light of his sword to the left and to the right.  A noise broken the silence; a sound of stone scraping on stone.  “There!” Allera shouted, pointing.  Talen brought the glowing sword around; they could see one of the stone lids sliding open; as they watched a pale claw reached out and grabbed the edge, shoving it hard out of the way.  The sound was echoed all around the chamber, from the darkness beyond the edge of their lights. “Gods, I hate it when I’m right,” Dar muttered, lifting his club.</blockquote>

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